AFTER `MEDAL' PERFORMANCE BY WIND, RAIN, COMPETITORS TAKE STAGE IN UTAH GAMES

After wreaking havoc with Monday's late-afternoon events and night-time opening ceremonies of the 1988 Utah Summer Games, Mother Nature only threatened to duplicate her feat with a short and light drizzle Tuesday afternoon.

The brief shower was only a reminder of the damage done Monday - enough damage to have the aftershocks continue into Tuesday.In reality, Tuesday had to double as a make-up day, with a number of events scheduled for Monday - such as some swimming and tennis competition - having to be pushed back because of the violent rainstorm that pummeled Cedar City early Monday evening.

However, even without the make-up efforts, Tuesday was overloaded with already-tight scheduling and numerous individual-event participants in sports such as gymnastics, swimming and karate. That meant a backlog in competition and result reporting - the latter despite a full crew of statisticians working on five different computer terminals from 7:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.

And that pushed the 9 p.m. awards ceremony in the SUSC Centrum - the first of several such ceremonies during the week-long games - back to nearly 10 p.m., with the distribution of medals continuing beyond 11:30 p.m.

Take, for example, 10-year-old Chad Paluso of Bountiful, who was awarded a hearty applause by swimming spectators. The fifth-grader-to-be swam in the marathon-like 1,000-meter freestyle against competitors who were five to eight years older than himself.

Paluso finished several laps behind the others in his heat but showed heart with a spirited sprint for the final 25 meters. A third-year swimmer, the youngster said he prefers the longer distances "Because it's the only way I can beat the big kids."

And then there's Ronald Friend of Salt Lake City, who found himself entered in the 165-pound novice division in Tuesday's boxing. Admitting that he had never boxed before in his life and, no, his mother probably didn't know where he was nor what he was doing, Friend needed to land only one punch in the first round before his opponent did a Robert Duran imitation - "No mas, no mas" - and gave Friend the gold medal.

Meanwhile, some of the Class II boys gymnasts - Rob Kjar, Casey Brian and Brian Mitchell - were using Tuesday's competition as a last-minute tune-up for the Junior Nationals to be held later this week in Albuquerque. The three collectively captured most of the individual-event medals in their division.

Another gymnasts headed the same way, Adam Pettingale, battled a bad case of the flu to capture several individual-event titles.

Tuesday marked the second and final day of gymnastics and the start of wrestling, karate and boxing competitions. Meanwhile, the tennis and swimming competitions made their to the midway point.

Swimming

Multiple winners Tuesday included Ralph Rawlinson of Cedar City in the men's masters division; University of Utah swimmer Shawn Rowland with three first-place finishes in the men's open; and Salt Lake City's Erik Hanssen and Albert Vicario each claiming a pair of gold medals in the men's scholastic category.

In the women's competition, Julie Etherington of Salt Lake City and Anni Marie Nicholson of Cedar City earned double gold honors in the scholastic and masters divisions, respectively. Meanwhile, Yolanda Bates of Logan claimed three open-division firsts for the second consecutive day.

Karate

An exhibition sport last year, karate opened up its first day of official competition by doubling as the state championships.